Before the delivery of the letter, a very pretty little ceremony took
place. The professor had stretched forth his hand to receive it, when,
by a sudden turn of the wrist and arm, the young lady whisked it out of
his reach and behind her back, and in place of it brought down her
fresh, sweet face with its fragrant mouth to within two inches of his
own wrinkled and bristly visage. A moment after, the ceremony was
completed, the letter delivered, and the postman, stepping over her
father's fallen slipper, leaned against the balcony-railing, and waited
for further developments.
The professor took his spectacles from his waistcoat pocket, placed them
carefully upon his strongly-marked nose, and scrutinized in turn the
direction, post-mark, and seal. With a sniff of surprise, he then tore
open the envelop, and became immediately absorbed in the contents of the
inclosure, indicating his progress by much pursing and biting of his
lips, wrinkling of his forehead, and drawing together of his heavy
eyebrows. Having at length reached the end of the last page, he turned
it sharply about, and went through it once more, with half-articulate
grunts of comment; and finally, folding the letter carefully up, and
replacing it in the torn envelop, he caught the spectacles off his
nose, and, with them in one hand and the paper in the other, fixed his
eyes upon the vacant spot at the summit of the hill.
His daughter meanwhile had taken off her brown straw-hat, and was using
it as a fan, keeping up a light tattoo with one foot upon the plank
flooring. Her face was glowing with her four-mile walk in the hot sun,
but she showed no signs of weariness. The position in which she stood
was easy and graceful, but there was nothing statuesque or imposing
about it; it was evident that at the very next instant she might shift
into another equally as happy. Her eyes wandered from one object to
another with the absence of concentration of one whose mind is not fixed
upon any thing in particular. From the letter between the professor's
finger and thumb, they traveled upward to his thoughtful countenance;
thence took a leap to the decrepit water-spout which depended weakly
from the corner of the balcony-roof, and thence again ascended to a
great, solid, white cloud, with turreted outline clear against the blue,
which was slowly sliding across the sky from the westward, and
threatened soon to cut off the afternoon sunshine.
The professor restlessly altered the position of his legs, thereby
drawing his daughter's attention once more to himself. Thinking she had
waited as long as was requisite for the maintenance of her dignity as a
non-inquisitive person, she transferred herself lightly to the arm of
her father's chair, grasping his beard in her plump, slender hand, and
turned his face up toward hers.